Heavy
by Nirav
Summary: Four times someone sang a song to Quinn Fabray, and one time she sang a song to everyone else: a series of unconnected drabbles, you might say.
1. Santana

**Lady Gaga, "Bad Romance"**

_I want your love/I don't want to be friends_

Quinn isn't often jealous of other people. Even when she tumbles down from her high school pedestal, the baby in her belly dragging her down like a steel anchor tugging on a chain that threatens to squeeze the pride right out of her, she retains the ability to look at her life objectively and realize that for all that she's lost, she's still smart and clever and pretty and sneaky enough to slip through life under the radar until she gives birth and can stage her return to the top. Even with the child of the biggest womanizer Lima's ever seen growing visibly in her stomach, she still has her brains and her ambition and her unbelievable ability to work the system. No one else in this little cow town possesses that skill—not even Sue Sylvester, for all that she likes to pretend that she does—and Quinn knows that she can and will use it to get back everything she lost.

All that said, though, she occasionally finds herself seething with envy at Santana's ability to compartmentalize. They've been best friends since the first grade, when Santana punched Puck in the mouth for kicking sand at her on the playground, and not a day has gone by without Quinn marveling at the other girl's ability to sequester off every portion of life from each other—family, friends, cheerleading, glee, academics, sex, popularity. Overlap happens only when she allows it, and the remainder of the time, it's like she keeps her entire life on a paper picnic divider plate with nothing touching.

Quinn can't do that. Her relationship with Finn bleeds into her ability to control the Cheerios and the school, which slides into joining the glee club, which molds into an intoxicated haze of seat and sex with Puck, which mushrooms into an atomic bomb explosion that wipes out every cent of popular currency she once had. Santana, though, can keep running the cheerleading squad separate from keeping glee club afloat in the face of slushies and sabotage, and both of those separate from her classwork and her family and relationships and sex and friendships.

There's a small measure of satisfaction, then, when Quinn finds out that she's the one thing that Santana can't keep neatly boxed away. She can barely remember how it started, only that there was anger and frustration and bitching and yelling and Santana glaring murderously while Quinn meticulously picked apart her every flaw, and then Quinn's back was slamming against the wall behind her and Santana was molded to her front and there was a tongue in her mouth and hands groping at her belt, and suddenly the lines between_ best friends_ and _head bitches_ and _fuck buddies_ were blurring and fading slipping away. And then Quinn felt like the breath had escaped her entirely and her fingernails were digging into the skin of Santana's back through thin cotton as her back arched and her body got tighter and tighter and tighter like a coiled spring until it snapped and she was biting down on Santana's shoulder as they both trembled and collapsed against the wall behind her.

Two weeks later, she was pregnant, and her fall from grace left her and Santana fighting more than ever, and invariably ended with them wrapped around one another in an empty bathroom or a supply closet or the Cheerio's locker room, Quinn quiet and submissive and reveling in the feeling of some tiny bit of control over Santana's obsessively-controlled life while Santana cursed and growled and left bruises that no one else ever saw.

When they performed _Bad Romance_ for the rest of the club, Quinn almost tripped over her comically conical pink dress when Santana's solo ripped out of the other girl's throat, angry and snarling as she slotted her eyes narrowly over to where Quinn stood; she missed the cue when the rest of them harmonized underneath her entirely. _I don't want to be friends_ she growled, glaring at Quinn for a split second before the entire group came back together for the last chorus, and Quinn felt a thrill of adrenaline.

Santana Lopez, she knew, was always wholly in control of her life, perfectly manicured fingernails gripping perilously tightly to every facet and keeping every tiny bit in order. Except for Quinn Fabray, who reveled in pushing her past her control and found a thrill she'd never experienced in needling her best friend until she yanked her into a corner to fuck her against the uncomfortable metal of the lockers.

It wasn't romance, Quinn knew, except in the Lady Gaga sense. _I don't want to be friends_, she thought, dark and triumphant, when Santana's rough hands carelessly ripped through Quinn's clothes in the dark of the dressing room behind that auditorium while Puck laughed with Mercedes twenty feet away. Santana's hands pushed roughly past the swell of Puck's child growing in Quinn's stomach, bypassing the mounting evidence of Quinn belonging to anyone else as she bit down on Quinn's neck and pinned her to the wall.

A bad romance, indeed.


	2. Finn

**Ludo, "Love Me Dead"**

_You're born of a jackal/You're beautiful!_

The day Finn fell in love with Quinn, he felt like someone had yanked the football field out from beneath his cleats, leaving him off-balance and perpetually on the verge of tumbling down. He was only fifteen years old and didn't know that feeling like he'd been suckerpunched in the gut every time he glanced over and saw his cheerleader girlfriend across the field meant anything other than that he wanted to sleep with her. All he knew, really, was that was she was beautiful and smart and funny and just the right amount of bitchy to never get boring, and that made her pretty perfect in his eyes.

The day he found out that she was carrying his best friend's baby felt strangely like the day he fell in love. All the wind burst out of him when she admitted it tearfully to his face, and he struggled desperately to hold onto his fury instead of the feeling that he was tipping, tipping, slowly tumbling forward into a spiral of heartbreak and tears and oh _God, _how could they do this to him?

He walked home, normally getting a ride with Quinn or Puck. It was close enough to not be horrible, but long enough for him to stew. Headphones shoved into his ears, he cranked the music up and shoved his hands in his pockets, shoulders tight as he stomped towards his house. Every few minutes he slowed and lashed out with one long leg, launching a trash can or stray soccer ball or piece of trash into an impressive trajectory through the air.

One song faded into another, and he unintentionally started humming along, the edges of depression and a vice on his heart starting to push through his anger making him desperate for anything to distract him.

"Love me cancerously," he mumbled along quietly with the music. His strides slowed, and he stared down at the iPod in his hand, considering the familiar song floating into his ears. "You're awful, I love you!" he belted out in time with the music, the words ripping raw and angry from his throat. A dark smile spread across his lips, and he sent another trash can skittering across a driveway as he started back on his way home.

"Must be the sign on my head," he sang. "That says _oh, _love me dead!" Yet another trash can felt victim to his size-twelve boot, launching fantastically into the fading green of a small yard.

"How's your new boy, does he know about me?" he went on as he made his way into the empty house. He flung his backpack theatrically down the steps towards his room. "You've got the mark of the beast. You're born of a jackal, you're beautiful!"

Eyes shut, he forced out the rest of the chorus, his rage slipping out of his body as the final chords echoed in his ears. He fumbled with the iPod, yanking the headphones out of his ears and slumping dejectedly, weight resting on his elbows atop the back of his father's chair.

A quiet sound broke through the feeling like he was going to break down and cry, and he bolted upright to see Quinn standing apprehensively in the open doorway. In the background, he saw Santana standing with her arms crossed and a darker sneer than normal pasted on her face, and realized they had probably witnessed him dancing around and all but screaming out Ludo in his living room.

"Sorry," Quinn mumbled. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her hair falling into her face, and she really was unspeakably beautiful even in sadness. "I was just going to get my stuff. I didn't think you'd want me here anymore."

A myriad of thoughts and feelings and impulses washed over him, the instinctive urge to hold and protect her battling with fury at her betrayal, both of those warring against ignoring everything and just starting over to when they were young and carefree and in love.

"Yeah," he muttered roughly, surprising himself. He thought of the song as he sucked in a breath to stall. _You're a parasitic psycho filthy creature finger bangin' my heart_. And oh, how it felt like she had done just that, using and discarding him in a way so much crueler than he'd ever imagined.

He stayed motionless as she skirted around the edge of the living room, a bored-looking Santana following her, and made her way to the guest room to gather her things. She paused on the way out, and he stared at her blankly.

"Finn," she mumbled, tears leaking out of her eyes once more.

"Is there like, a sign on my forehead?" he asked bluntly. "Is there something up there asking people to fuck me over?"

She flinched, though for his tone or his language, he wasn't sure, and he smiled thinly. Angry as he was, he still felt a girlish flutter in his chest just at the sight of her.

_You're awful, I love you._

He decided, as she shuffled dejectedly out of his house, that truer words had never been spoken.


	3. Puck

**Cloud Cult, "Washed Your Car"**

_Built your cupboards out of my bones/Shoveled your snow with an ice cream cone_

Noah Puckerman doesn't try. That's his deal in life. He's smart enough that he can scrape by with mid-range grades without studying, he's clever enough to keep a pool-cleaning business running in Ohio, and sexy enough to bang most of the hot women in town without having to try and charm his way into their pants. He doesn't try because he doesn't have to, and he likes it that way.

Except, of course, when it comes to Quinn Fabray. Quinn Fabray and her morals, her chastity, her perfectly wavy blonde hair and Cheerios-toned figure and delicate features, looking every bit of the kind of tragic beauty people wrote sonnets and plays and songs about. Even her sneers, her confidence, her determination to make his life a living hell at times, was beautiful, and he wanted her more than anything he'd ever had.

He had tried everything over the years. Before she was dating Finn, he tried asking her out, but she turned him down. When she and Finn broke up for three months sophomore year, he talked Mr. Fabray into letting him do all their yard work that summer, mowing their yard and cleaning their pool and washing their cars, even tilling Mrs. Fabray's evil vegetable garden. Two and a half months of flashing his exceptionally perfect guns and the ridged lines of his stomach at her hadn't worked; she had merely rolled her eyes and scoffed and sent him off with a bottle of Vitamin Water to go finish the next thing on her parents' list while she lounged and tanned.

She slept with him once, and he wasn't fool enough to think it meant anything to her. As much as it meant to him—and _God_, did it mean everything to him—it was nothing to her except a way to forget how terrible she felt, and he knew that. He awkwardly hung around after they were done, offering to take her out to dinner, uncomfortably trying to ask her out on a real date, but she brushed him off with a half-heartedly arrogant sneer and told him he needed to leave before her father got home. She disappeared into the bathroom, and his stomach clenched at the sound of the door locking before the shower started to run.

Then she was pregnant, and she hated him more than ever. The harder he tried, the further she pushed him away. He tried to give her money, and she refused. He tried to give Finn a subtle bro-friendly kick in the pants to get his ass in gear on earning his own money, and she looked at him angrily for punching her boyfriend. He tried to take responsibility, to step up and be the man he thought she wanted, and she knocked him down every time.

Then she gave their daughter away, and it was the last straw. Before school broke for the summer, he cornered her after a class and told her she needed to meet him in the practice room to talk that afternoon.

"You owe me," he said darkly, and a flash of guilt appeared in her eyes before she nodded shortly.

Two hours later, he sat uncomfortably on a stool, a guitar in his lap, his fingers shaking and his chest tight as he strummed a few chords. Before she could open her mouth to speak, he shook his head, started the song, and started to sing.

"I washed you car last week," he started. "You gave me a kiss on the cheek. I asked if you would be my sweet; you said 'baby, not me'."

His fingers stopped shaking as they pressed against the guitar, and his chest loosened as, for the first time in his life, he stared Quinn Fabray down and won.


	4. Rachel

**Massive Attack, "Protection"**

_I know you want to live yourself/But could you forgive yourself?_

It's their last glee club rehearsal together—the original twelve, that is. They're all about to head off to college after just barely—_barely—_losing out for second at Nationals. As bummed as they all are (Quinn is surprised that Rachel has even dragged herself out of bed) about letting Vocal Adrenaline take back the title they'd earned the year before, they still had a great run. The club is twice the size it was initially, though still at the bottom of the social ladder, and they'd somehow stayed a somewhat cohesive unit after the Babygate drama, the Jesse drama, the Kurt-dating-a-boy-from-another-glee-club drama, the apocalyptic Quinn-and-Rachel-and-Santana-and-Brittany-and-Finn-and-Puck-are-all-best-friends insanity. And now, halfway through July after they've graduated high school, the original twelve are together for one last jam session.

"Everyone," Rachel says clearly, her voice ringing above everyone else's like it always does. "I have something I'd like to say."

"Of course you do," Quinn and Puck muttered in unison. Santana smirked and held her hands up over her shoulders for the two of them, standing behind her to high five. Finn grins good naturedly at their antics and shrugs at Rachel, and Brittany smiles widely and gestures for her to go on; Rachel sighs, rolling her eyes indulgently at her friends' antics, before continuing. "As this is our last group gathering before we all go our separate ways for college—though several of us are ending up in the same city, and a few even at the same school—"

"On with it, Berry!" Santana catcalls. Rachel sticks her tongue out at the cheerleader—who, really, was no longer a Cheerio; no one was quite used to seeing Brittany and Santana out and about in regular clothes yet—and Mr. Scheuster half-heartedly admonishes Santana, who sticks her tongue out right back at Rachel.

"Anyways," Rachel says loudly. "If we can set the childish antics aside, I have a song I would like to sing."

"Of course you do," Quinn and Puck mutter again. This time, Brittany giggles and claps delightedly at their delivery, and Rachel merely spins on her heel and settles herself at the piano.

"If I may?" she asks threateningly, glaring at Quinn and Puck.

"You may," Quinn says. A soft smile graces her lips, and she holds her hands up in surrender, obediently settling back in her seat and folding her arms into her lap, attention focusing on Rachel intently. Puck grumbled and sat back in his own chair, but Rachel's eyes remained locked on Quinn's; the brunette flushed just barely visibly—obvious only to the five who had spent more time than all the others with her—and coughed before turning her attention to the opening notes she was playing.

"This girl I know," Rachel starts softly, and Quinn immediately stiffens imperceptibly. "Needs some shelter. She don't believe anyone can help her."

Quinn feels heat spread across her cheeks, unbidden memory flashing through her mind of a night they had all passed out drunk on the living room floor in Rachel's house, her parents out of town for the weekend.

_Puck had been sprawled under the coffee table, an X-Box controller digging into his side; Finn was curled up girlishly on the sofa, clutching a pillow under his head. Brittany and Santana, unsurprisingly, were wrapped around one another in the middle of the floor, and Quinn was half-drunk and half-asleep with her head in Rachel's lap, Rachel's fingers sliding clumsily, tiredly through blonde hair._

_ "Finn is such a lightweight," Quinn mumbled, turning onto her side and letting her eyes slip shut. _

_ "He really is," Rachel said. She yawned, her hand leaving Quinn's hair as she stretched. "Oh, God, it's four in the morning," she muttered._

_ "Sleepy time," Quinn said drowsily. _

_ "Exactly," Rachel responded. She nudged the back of Quinn's head. "I'm going to go to bed."_

_ "What?" Quinn asked, alarmed. "You can't move! You're my pillow."_

_ "Quinn, I am not sleeping on the living room floor when I have a perfectly comfortable bed upstairs." Her words, usually so perfectly annunciated, slurred together slightly in her intoxication, and Quinn giggled._

_ "But you're my pillow," Quinn repeated. "I'm not drunk enough to sleep without a pillow." Clearly, though, she was drunk enough to find perfect sense in convincing Rachel sleep on the floor with the rest of them._

_ "That's ridiculous," Rachel said. "I'm going to bed. You can stay here, or you can come upstairs and sleep there. But I'm not sleeping on the floor."_

_ "Well, fine then," Quinn muttered. She hauled herself up off the floor, pausing momentarily to find her balance through the haze of vodka, and leaned on Rachel to be sure she didn't fall. "Let's go, then."_

_ "Yes, ma'am," Rachel said sullenly, and Quinn giggled again at her tone, poking her in the side._

_ Upstairs, Quinn flopped face-down onto Rachel's bed with a sigh. "Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," she murmured. "Have I ever told you that I love your bed?"_

_ "You sound like Puck," Rachel said. Her voice sounded fuzzy and distant, and Quinn grinned sleepily into the pillow. _

_ "It happens to the best of us," she offered, rolling over as Rachel laid down and pulled the blankets over them. It was far from the first time they had shared a bed, the past year of their unusual orgy-friendship (as Santana had dubbed it, and then immediately retracted after Brittany thought that it meant that they would all be having sex with each other, which Santana vehemently shot down in a split second) filled with drunken nights just like this one. Quinn had no idea how many times since Beth was born and their strange six-way friendship had started to develop that she had slept peacefully next to Rachel, or Finn, or Puck, or between Brittany and Santana. Each experience was distinct and different, with Rachel curling into her side like a cat, Finn slinging a long arm around her waist protectively from behind, Puck pulling her into his side and kissing the top of her head, Brittany snuggling into her chest while Santana somehow managed to tangle her legs through both of theirs. _

_ "Rachel," Quinn whispered after long minutes had ticked past. The brunette was peacefully asleep, and Quinn couldn't get back to sleep to save her life. She reached out and poked Rachel in the side with her free arm, the one around Rachel's shoulders jostling the other girl lightly._

_ "Go 'way," Rachel mumbled in her sleep, curling around Quinn's side more tightly._

_ "Rachel!" Quinn whined insistently. She poked Rachel again. "I can't sleep."_

_ "Urgh," Rachel muttered. Her eyes fluttered open. "Dammit, Quinn, I was asleep."_

_ "And I wasn't!"_

_ "Not my problem!"_

_ "It's going to be if you don't fix it," Quinn shot back snarkily._

_ "What in the world do you want me to do about it?" Rachel asked incredulously._

_ Quinn shrugged. "I don't know," she said, flushing slightly in the dark. "Count sheep with me? Tell me a bedtime story? Sing to me?" She ticked off the drunken suggestions, her fingers tapping against the bare skin of Rachel's arm each time._

_ "I'll sing you one song," Rachel said grumpily. _

_ "Better be a good one," Quinn said with a sleepy smirk. Rachel swatted at her arm blindly before she sat up to grab the water bottle from her bedside. Quinn swallowed the comment about Rachel's insistence on staying so well hydrated and waited, curled on her side and watching as Rachel thought for a moment._

_ "This girl I know," she sang quietly, staring at the ceiling. "Needs some shelter. Don't believe that anyone can help her." The words slipped out of her quietly, wrapping around Quinn's suddenly completely sober and awake mind._

_ "Sometimes you look so small," she continued into another verse, and finally glanced over at Quinn, who was staring up at her, enraptured. "You've got a baby of your own." _

_ Quinn's breath caught in her throat, and she missed a series of lines, staring wide-eyed up at Rachel._

_ "I stand in front of you," Rachel finished softly. "I'll take the force of the blow." She laid back down, a confused look in her eyes as she met Quinn's gaze. _

_ "You're still awake," she observed. "I'm sorry. I'm not a very good drunk singer."_

_ "It's okay," Quinn said softly. Suddenly, clumsily, catching both of them off-guard in their fatigue and intoxication, she leaned forward and pressed her lips against Rachel's. "Thanks," she mumbled, before burying her head in Rachel's neck and curling into her side. _

_ They never talked about it._

"Sometimes you look so small," Rachel sang. Her eyes were half-shut, hands moving over the piano keys blindly; Quinn stared at her openly, knowing and not caring that the other ten members of glee, plus Mr. Scheu, were all staring at _her_; all she could think of was how very much she remembered the first time Rachel had sung this song to her, how she had reacted, how it had felt to hear the words directed at her. "Need some shelter. Just runnin' round and round, helter skelter."

Rachel finally opened her eyes the rest of the way, scanning across the eleven faces in the room until she found Quinn's gaze. The blonde was gaping at her, biting down on her lower lip with wide eyes and a delicate flush gracing her cheekbones.

"I stand in front of you," Rachel ended, her voice quiet. "I'll take the force of the blow."

As the last echoing chords of the piano faded, the silent reverie that had overtaken the room passed, and the expected applause started up. Mr. Scheu complimented Rachel's piano playing, and Santana cracked a joke with Puck while Brittany gushed and Mike and Matt were stoic and silent as always; Mercedes was grudgingly complimenting Rachel and Artie was commenting on Rachel's surprisingly cosmopolitan music tastes, but Rachel was just nodding absently and staring intently at Quinn, who had yet to move.

Mr. Scheu, slow as always to catch on but as good-hearted as usual when he did, not at all subtly corralled the rest of the room out into the hallway, leaving the two of them alone. Quinn remained in her chair on the back riser, staring down to where Rachel stood nervously.

Rachel finally broke the silence. "We're both going to be in New York," she started. "And I think—"

Quinn held up a hand, cutting her off. Rachel's mouth snapped shut, and Quinn slowly made her way to her feet, delicately navigating her way through the maze of chairs down to the floor. In front of Rachel, she looked thoughtfully down at the girl in front of her.

"Just kiss her already!" Puck bellowed from outside the door, staring through the glass enthusiastically.

Rachel flushed almost purple, and Quinn laughed loudly when she saw Santana's tan hand grabbing ahold of the collar of his t-shirt and yanking him away; taking his advice, she turned to a violently blushing Rachel and leaned down to kiss her soundly.


	5. Quinn

**Florence and the Machine, "Heavy In Your Arms"**

_My love has concrete feet/My love's an iron ball_

Mr. Scheu wanted her to sing another solo for the club. After all, he said, she had done such a fantastic job with the funk assignment; surely she could latch onto that passion again and deliver a performance to rival anything Rachel or Mercedes had to offer. It was only when Mercedes shot her a skeptical look—they may be friends now, but that hardly meant that they got along perfectly, and Mercedes continued to consider herself the only vocal powerhouse in glee besides Rachel—that Quinn accepted the offer, promising to have something ready for the next rehearsal.

Of course, with no genre limitations or assignment to follow, she found herself desperately in search of a song. She couldn't find a single song that fit her range_ and_ her emotions, and by the time she was a day shy of her presentation date she was ready with exactly nothing.

Then she heard it on the radio in the showers after Cheerios practice. The range was off, but she could probably fiddle around with it to make it work; more than anything, though, it _fit_, perfectly, everything from Finn to Puck to her family to Beth to every person she had loved and hurt and broken in her life. The guilt that weighted down on her shoulders every day at the thought of the daughter she'd not been good enough to keep, the selfishness that had pushed apart her family and broken Finn's heart and torn Puck down repeatedly and demolished Santana's already-miniscule ability to love and even wrecked Rachel Berry's good-hearted optimism and romanticism, that had contributed to the dissolution of Mr. Scheuster's marriage, could all channel into minor key guitar chords and a militaristic kettle drum line.

She managed to cobble together an arrangement that fit her voice that night, and barely had time to get the music to the band kids that morning; the day flew by and she found herself standing nervously in front of almost every person she'd hurt as she prepared to sing. If her family and Finn's and Puck's moms were there, it would be just perfect, she thought grimly. The opening chords rang out, and her mouth set in a grim line before she let her eyes slip shut and started to sing.

"I was a heavy heart to carry, my beloved was weighed down," she started softly. "My arms around his neck, my fingers laced to crown."

She opened her eyes slowly, her gaze skimming around the room gently and pausing momentarily on Finn's discomfort, Puck's disappointment, Santana's anger, Rachel's wounded rabbit look. Swallowing the lump in her throat and determined that she wasn't going to break down at the thought of how badly she had hurt half the people in this room, she pushed through with the song, her voice growing stronger and stronger with each line. The frustration and anger she'd not allowed herself to acknowledge, annoyance that all of them knew exactly who she was and had still let themselves get sucked into the black hole that was loving Quinn Fabray, bubbled to the surface.

"And is it worth the wait, all this killing time? Are you strong enough to stand, protecting your heart and mine?" She cut her eyes back across the room, from Rachel to Santana to Puck to Finn.

"This will be my last confession, 'I love you' never felt like any blessing," she sang softly, her throat aching as her voice carried over the crescendo in the music, coming out stronger and more raw than she'd ever felt it even in a quiet delivery. "Whispering like it's a secret only to condemn the one who hears it with a heavy heart."

Her eyes slipped shut once more as she forged ahead through the final lines, her chest and stomach and throat aching. "I'm so heavy, heavy," she belted out the last line. "I'm so heavy in your arms."

The music faded away, and all that was left to hear was her own labored breathing. The room was silent as everyone stared at her, the four hearts she'd broken ranging from wounded to angry to confused as everyone else just looked uncomfortable. The last time she'd sung so passionately, they had all moved to embrace her together; this time, she stood alone and lonely, no one courageous enough to come close enough to touch her.

She waited, biting down on her lip and letting her eyes scan over the room. No one met her eye, no one moved, and she kept standing alone, waiting.


End file.
